had gone right at his new job and all day long he'd suffered
because a filling had fallen out of one of his front teeth. A throbbing hole the size of
the grand canyon made for a miserable day. He'd eaten nothing but aspirin and coffee for
the entire workshift, and then went home to his cave and directly to bed without supper.

He fell asleep immediately, but then awoke around midnight when his
hellacious toothache got lonesome and woke him. He took more aspirin, and even placed a
chunk directly inside the cavity, knowing that you're not supposed to do that. Then he
flopped back to bed and waited for the pain to subside.

When it did, he still couldn't sleep. He was ravenously hungry. Visions
of food danced in his head and made him drool. He pictured juicy venison steaks, banana
creme pies, pepperoni pizza, frybread tacos, and even the noodle casserole he had once
made for Coyote.

Determined not to do anything that might aggravate his tooth, Old Bear
thrashed atop his bed and tried to quit thinking of food. When he was younger, any
insomnia he had was quickly quelled with sweet thoughts of women. And more often than not,
there was a cuddly female bear in bed next to him. Now that he was far past his prime and
not all that interested in females, all he could think of was food when he wanted a
distraction. Deliriously hungry, he now went so far as to visualize the strange types of
food he had seen his friends eat over the years.

Once, in the sixties, he had gone through a period when he'd grown his
hair long and had taken to wearing sandals. He moved from the high plains to San Francisco
where he lived with an Arapahoe woman who worked as a stripper in North Beach. Her name
was Lavina and Lavina's high point in dining was to go down to a nearby fish and chips
place, buy a large order, take them home, and drown them with Miracle Whip before
devouring them. Old Bear didn't stay with her for very long.

Many of his friends had peculiar culinary habits, and the oddest of his
pals was Raven. Old Bear and Raven had batched together during the messy period after Old
Bear's first divorce. It was a time of serious drinking and skirt chasing, a time long
before Raven developed his taste for haute cuisine and abusing women.

For breakfast, Raven would very often take a slice of white bread,
butter it, then peck out a hole in the center. He would fry it in a skillet and just when
it started to brown, he would drop an egg into the hole he'd created. When this concoction
was done, he would cover the entire mess with strawberry jam and devour it. The
recollection of this culinary delight always sent Old Bear's stomach into spasms of
anarchy and revulsion. Bears have a nasty sweet tooth.

Raven was also the first one to show him the peculiar joys of menudo.
Menudo, that spicy tripe soup that Chicanos and some Indians were so fond of, seemed
to be a far cry from taniga, the traditional tripe soup of the Sioux that Old Bear
was quite familiar with. Old Bear eventually did develop a taste for menudo, and
found it was most excellent for hangovers. While he wasn't exactly big on eating the
innards of mammals, menudo became one of his all-time favorites.

Tripe soup was one of the few internal organ dishes he would eat. He
could still remember his own grandfather Great Bear frying up a skillet of cow brains for
breakfast. The very memory made Old Bear retch. He never liked tongue, heart, brains,
although he would eat liver and onions and sometimes would treat himself to liverwurst
lunch meat. He sure as hell had never eaten "mountain oysters" and never would.
The very thought of them made him cross his legs and wince.

Old Bear stretched on his bed and scratched his own oysters and at that
moment he noticed that his tooth pain had miraculously vanished. He rolled over and
allowed his brain to continue bombarding his stomach with visions of food. He never was
big on ketchup, but now even the thought of just plain ketchup made his mouth water. His
first wife, a bear woman, used to drench everything she ate with ketchup. From baked
potatoes to bacon, from tuna fish sandwiches to toast in the morning, she ate everything
swimming in ketchup. Her name was Mountain Bear Woman and she hailed from the hills near
Lame Deer, Montana.

Mountain Bear Woman ate ketchup on Spam and ketchup on spaghetti. Bear
only rarely used ketchup, sometimes a little on a burger or a dab on his French fries, but
his first wife was a ketchup freak. Mountain Bear Woman even ate plain ketchup sandwiches.
Old Bear was sure that her peculiar diet played a part in his decision to divorce her.
Plus she was screwing around with a white cowboy.

And so, into the night, he lay spasming on the bed dreaming of food.
Coming from a very poor family of ten cubs, there were still some foods he would not eat
as an adult. He hated the concoction of macaroni, hamburger, and tomato sauce that the
humans called "American chop suey." He would no longer eat peas from a can. Or
creamed corn. He would not eat Spam or processed American cheese. Spam and cheese
sandwiches had been a family staple when he was growing up.

Nevertheless, his own mother always made her own bread, and he
remembered how in grade school he would trade sandwiches with his buddies so he could have
some of that wondrous "Wonder Bread." Now he salivated copiously at the mere
thought of his mother's bread. He pictured the steaming loaves, fresh from the oven, with
hand-churned butter drizzled over the top of them. The yeasty memory made rivulets of
drool dribble down his chin. Sometimes the good old days really were the good old days.

"Ah Mom, you made good bread," he said in semi-prayer. His
mother had gone to the spirit world many years before.

His family had had a cow named Bossie when he was growing up. He used
to have to milk her morning and night, and thus to this day he had always preferred the
milk that came in cartons. The milk taken directly from the cow tasted too wild and
reminded him of the liberties he had taken with Bossie one warm summer night when his
raging groin grew hungry. And he loved homemade butter. He would take Bossie's cream, put
it in a jar, and shake it until it turned to butter. Then he would take the congealed
cream and press it through a cheesecloth. Her butter was most excellent.

Bear dreamed on about food, sweet, delicious food. Food thoughts were
running rampant through his soul. He still had a fondness for fry bread, but he liked it
cooked in a skillet rather than deep fried. One of his nieces had a fondness for peanut
butter and banana sandwiches, which he thought a little weird, but he recalled chunky
peanut butter and maple syrup sandwiches.

And when things had been lean during his childhood, his mother would
make sandwiches out of lard sprinkled with sugar. He pictured his mother's stew. The
family seemed to live on stew and he always figured a bear could live on a good, beef stew
and little else. When he was a teenager, he would butter two slices of bread and put cold
stew leftovers between thema stew sandwich. He even took stew sandwiches to school.

"You ain't lived until you've eaten a cold stew sandwich," he
told Raven one night when they were in a cowboy bar, drunk, womanless and starving for any
hint of something feminine.

"Give me corn chowder any day," Raven said.

"Forget that. Cold stew sandwiches rule."

"You mammals got your head up your"

"No man, I'm telling you. There's nothing in the world that can
compare to a cold stew sandwich on a hot summer day.

Old Bear could relate to the latter sandwich of jam and mayo. One of
his supreme favorites was leftover turkey made into sandwiches with mayonnaise and
cranberry saucethe jellied kind, not the stuff with real live cranberries dancing
around in it. It was the thought of this particular sandwich that made Thanksgiving a
pleasant memory. And mince meat pie, oh sexually sweet mince meat pie!

And so, tossing and turning in his dream palace of food, it was
inevitable that his mind would dredge up the highest form of food known to bears and
mankindbeans!

Old Bear loved beans in any form. He drooled over ham hocks and lima
beans, butter beans and sausage, canned pork and beans, chili beans, refried beans, Cajun
red beans and rice, and just plain kidney beans spiced up with bacon and onion. He was mad
about any form of the "musical fruit" from bean sandwiches to bean soup, from
barbecued beans to three bean salad. He was a freak for nachos slathered with bean dip. He
was mad for Navy bean soup.

In fact, he thought, if the United States government would forget
nuclear reactors or Iranian oil for a while and concentrate on harnessing the power of the
bean, then Mother Earth might just be around a little longer, not that he was an
environmentalist or anything.

And why couldn't the pencil pushers at the Pentagon devise a machine
gun that fired cooked beans? Or a bazooka that launched bean burritos? Maybe, Old Bear
thought, in that way the cruel stupidity that mankind was so fond of, that Godless tragedy
they called war, would never amount to much more than a hill of beans.

And so Old Bear's mind continued to rage on at the same time his
stomach growled and whined. In the middle of the night, because of a toothache, he began
thinking of food and made a thought bridge from beans to nuclear energy. And was he ever
hungry! He was truly starving to death on his bed. He dreamed of being buried alive in a
steaming mountain of pinto beans and buttered bread.

At two-thirty in the morning, somewhere in that nebulous region between
sleep and waking, Old Bear began to hear strange voices coming from his refrigerator. He
knew who was speaking to him. It was a pot of leftover kidney beans chattering in the
chilly depths of the fridge.

"Come and get us," they said.

Old Bear sat up in bed and lit a cigarette and smiled.

"Come and get us," the pot of beans repeated.

"Okay, damn it, you asked for it," he said and stood up.

Old Bear got dressed and attacked the pot of beans. He was hungry, ever
so hungry and his bad-ass toothache was long gone. It was wonderful, he thought, to live
alone and to be kind and caring to yourself. And he sat at his kitchen table and ate and
ate and stared out the window at the twinkling stars. They were as numerous as the beans
in the pot he held. The recently deceased beans in his stomach were just beginning to
release their souls. Old Bear became Heaven. Old Bear became God. Old Bear became the
nacreous gas of space before the Big Bang.

Auntie Angie's
Cheyenne Affair

THREE YEARS SINCE I SEEN THAT GIRL MARIANA AND I GUESS IT'S HIGH

time to find her. Timmy John Pretty Bull, he say he seen her
up in Montana, in the city of Billings and I say what's she doing up there and he says,
well, you know, drinking and stuff. So when I find out he's headed for Crow Fair to fancy
dance, I ask him to drive me and I'll catch a bus into Billings. I guess it's high time to
find that girl I tell him.

"I doubt she's gonna want to come home," he says.

"Why you say that?" I ask him.

"Well," he says. "If she wanted to be down here in South
Dakota, then she wouldn't be up there."

"Hummppphhh," I say. Sometimes talking to that boy is like
talking to a television set. The set it don't hear you and it says things that don't make
much sense. And some of those programs laugh to themselves over something not funny.
That's how that boy is. Sometimes he just let out a high giggle for no reason.

"Well, it's up to you," he say and shakes his head and let
out a young pony whinny-giggle.

Well, I tell him yes, it sure is up to me and he says okay and
we go. It's warm, too warm out, and there's a lot of dead skunks on the road when we leave
the Rez, go to Rapid City, and then north on Interstate 90 into Wyoming and towards
Montana. A good thing his car radio work but that boy only play what you call rap and it
don't make no sense to me.

Seven hours later, Timmy John drive me from Crow Agency to Hardin for
me to catch the bus. Last time I was up here many years ago, them Crow Indians stacked
like cordwood outside the bars. And here they are again. A shame to be seen that way and
only a few miles from Big Horn Battlefield and all them tourists looking for a whiff of
something noble Indian. Well, that's what they get for siding with the wasicu
against us Sioux and Cheyenne. Damn them anyways.

And damn that Mariana for running away, I'm thinking when I see all
those drunk Crows. Oh, it's sad to be an old woman. Sad to be sixty-three, but I ain't
dead yet, so it's even sadder to be looking for my niece Mariana. Thank God I got my AA to
keep me sane. And I got one of their books with me in case I feel weak and need some good
words.

She's just a kid, sure, almost twenty even if she already had two
babies she adopted out besides Sherman who died. And here Timmy John said he seen her all
drunked up in the bars downtown Billings. Said that's where to look. And that she looked
pretty rough and all like some kinda tramp. I didn't like him saying that, but at
least he's a honest boy even though he does drink. Well, he don't drink no more than
anybody else. These kids these days. They make ancestor spirits cry.

And so I ride the bus to Billings. There's some Indians, maybe
Cheyennes, on the bus, but I don't look at them. I got things on my mind. This ain't no
joy ride and I ain't on vacation. When the bus pull into the station, it is starting
getting dark and all the lights of the city is coming on. The streets full of traffic from
all the people going home from work, whatever kind of work they all do downtown Billings.
It sure is a big city and it don't look too friendly.

So I tie my old blue scarf on my head get out with my shoulder bag and
purse and go looking for Mariana, damn her drunk hide. Timmy John he say all them bars
downtown is all close together and not too far from the bus station and that's where to
look if he was me. And here by the time I make it to the first bar, it is now pitch black
out and this bar only has a small blinking Budweiser sign on it, no name far as I can see.
There is a young Indian boy standing in front of the door, blocking it.

"Nephew," I say. "Is this where all the Skins hang
out?"

"I ain't your nephew, old lady," he say real rude to me.
Well, what a little bitch he is. And dressed in a leather vest and tight Levi's,
and wearing dark glasses at night. His black hair is short and all greased back.

"What tribe are you?" I ask him and wonder if his whole damn
tribe be as rude as him.

Well, I almost want to slap him and ask don't Chicanos teach their
children to respect elders, but I don't. He really make me mad. And don't he know that
Mexicans are Indians too. Where does he think his brown skin come from? Eating too many
bean burritos? Oh, this boy he make me mad, but I just ask him if there is many Indians
inside the bar. If there is any young Indian girls.

"Oh, so that's what you're looking for," he says and chuckles
and then raises his eyes to the sky. He don't know it, but he is sure close to getting his
Taco lips slapped good.

"Well, yes I am," I say. "One about twenty,
good-looking. Long black hair down to her waist."

"Damn," he says. "You lezzies got an appetite even when
you're elderly," and laughes and stands aside from the door. I don't know what he
means, but I walk in and am I surprised. There's guys dancing with guys. And here they are
kissing each other too. Most are dressed in leather. This is a winkte bar. It's
like I opened a trap door to hell. I can't believe it. They can't believe me either. They
all stare at me like I'm the one just came in from outer space and not them.

"Is there something you need?" a big muscleman with tattoos
all over his arms asks me. Well, there is lots of things I need, but I don't have time to
give him my list. He's wearing rhinestone ear rings and cowboy chaps of black leather. I
can't take my eyes off them chaps and ear rings. Geez, what is wrong with these people
anyways.

"Well, I'm looking for my niece, name Mariana Two Knives," I
say and try to keep from giggling at his chaps. I want to ask him if he going to a rodeo
later tonight, but I bite my lips. No sense in being rude like them.

"Two Knives? Try the next bar up the block. That's where all the
war whoops congregate for prayer services," he says.

"War whoops?" I ask. War whoops?

"Yeah, you know, those of the Native American Indian persuasion.
War whoopslike you."

"Thanks, Tattoo," I say to this jackass and turn and leave
the winkte bar not a minute too soon. "I hope you don't get bucked off easy
tonight," I say and wink but he just give me a blank stare like my putdown ain't even
stuck to him. As I'm heading out the door, two boys on the dance floor are starting to
fight, screaming like women, and trying to scratch each other's eyes out. Now I seen it
all I think. Now I seen it all...

But I sure ain't. Walking to the next bar, there is a street full of
prostitutes. Shaking their rear ends, waving at traffic and such. I know what they are and
they're Indian too. I start to walk up to one to ask about Mariana, but when I do, this
young girl I approach glance quick at me then turn her eyes. I can tell she is shamed.

"Excuse me," I say.

"I'm too busy," she says, chewing gum not even looking at me
when she talks. She is close to Mariana's age.

"I'm looking for someone," I say and just then she snap her
eyes and walks away before I can even finish what I'm saying. What is the matter with
these kids these days? Damn, if she so shamed out about what she is doing then she
shouldn't be doing it.

"I'm gonna tell your family," I say at her rapidly moving
backside even though I don't know her family. "I know your mother and father," I
lie. When I say that, she starts to run. I don't know. Maybe I'm being too mean to the
poor child. She looks like a Cheyenne girl. Probably from Lame Deer. I keep going towards
the other bar when a man's voice comes out of the darkness.

"Who you looking for, Grandmother?"

"Huh," I say and turn around. "Grandmother?" I say
when I see the man is close to my age. "Grandmother?"

"Who are you looking for?" the man says again. I squint my
eyes and see he's a middle-aged Indian man with short hair and bad, bad complexion. He is
wearing a green suit coat, a clean white shirt, and baggy Levis. His pimply face got a
straw Stetson squatting on top of it.

"My niece Mariana Two Knives," I say. "Who are you
anyways?"

"Richard Tall Elk," he tell me. "Cheyenne."

Well, at least I'm a little relieved he ain't no Crow Indian. I tell
him my name and tell him where I'm from. He tell me he's been to Pine Ridge, he might know
my relatives, and then asks me if I can buy him a drink.

"Sure could use one, if you don't mind," he says.

"Well, I do mind because I'm in AA," I tell him. "But,
if you help me look for my niece, I'll give you two dollars."

"Yeah, sure I'll help you," he says. "Best place too
look is right up this street here. Come on. I'll take you in and introduce you around.
Lots of wild Indians in there."

"Well, I didn't come up here just to gander at drunk Indians and I
don't like the idea of going into these bars. I'm still recovering," I tell him just
so he know I ain't some tramp or something.

"You want to preach me that AA stuff or you want to find your
niece?" he ask and keeps walking. I follow. He don't seem dangerous or sneaky like
some drunks.

"Never heard of her," a strange, fat, bald Indian gent in the
bar where we first go tells us. Well, nothing to do but go down the row of barstools and
ask until someone say something I want to hear. And halfway down, I hear something I have
come to hear.

"Yeah, I know Mariana," a young girl about twenty or so says
when I ask her. She is dressed good, wears glasses, and I wonder how come she is in this
stinky saloon.

"Mariana went back to Rapid City just yesterday," she says.

"You her friend?" I ask.

"Not really," she says. "We just covered some of the
same territory. Drank together and stuff. I know her pretty good."

Territory, I think and then I wonder if Mariana been out on the
street selling her fanny like these other Indian girls. I hope not. I say a silent prayer
and give this Tall Elk guy the two dollars like I promised. One thing, I am not an Indian
giver. Thanks, he tell me and he scoots out the door fast as can be, the poor thirsty
thing.

"See you," I say, then I leave too, walking the direction
back to the bus station.

On the way there, not one minute after I leave that bar, is this same
Cheyenne guy and two young blacks, hasapas, is talking to him. Both them wearing
them silly, baggy-bloomer shorts. I am walking towards them and soon I can hear the Indian
guy say that he don't got no money and to leave him alone. And here one of the black guys,
maybe seventeen years old, he shove this Richard Tall Elk down to the ground real hard.

"Hey," I yell. "Leave that man alone." Both of them
are trying to go through his pocket while he is on the sidewalk. In the darkness, they
look like black wolves ripping chunks of flesh off some poor deer or something. It is
scaring me. "Help," I yell and look around but nobody is there to help. And one
of the blacks he leap up and run towards me.

Next thing I know he is trying to punch me with one hand while his
other is trying to steal my purse. I am kicking and yelling and trying to hit him back
with my free hand. Some of the things I am saying are bad, bad cuss words, but even those
don't stop him. It become clear to me that I am dealing with the devil, even if his skin
is black.

For a second his hand release my purse and I am swinging it to his
cruel head. It smacks solid, clunk. His eyes go blank so I do it again and again. Clunk,
clunk, and then crack. His nose gushing blood and I don't feel no pity for him. Then his
black buddy is helping him escape down some alleyway. And nobody left on the Billings
street but me and the Cheyenne man. His nose is bleeding too and he stand up shaking from
fear. He is crying and so I start too.

"They got my two dollars," he says.

"That ain't nothing," I tell him. "At least we're alive.
They coulda cut our throats. What's the matter with them anyways. Lord, don't they have no
respect for old people?"

"Naw," he say. "They don't respect nothing, even
themselves. There didn't use to be none of them around here. Now these past couple years a
whole bunch of coloreds move up from Denver, L.A, whatever. This place is dangerous now at
night. They don't care. And it ain't only blacks. It's the Mexicans, the Indians, the
whites too. They'll kill you and take your money, these young ones. This the third time
this year I got rolled by young boys. And not only that, they sell dope to the Indians
like Indians ain't got enough trouble handling just booze."

"Damn them anyways," I say. "What's the matter with
those blacks? No wonder those cops beat up that Rodney King."

"Honest, it ain't only the black ones," he says. "Some
of these Indians and Mexicans just as bad, if not worse," he say and take my hand.
"You talk to any Indian in Billings. Damn hard to live on skid row anymore."

"You saved my life," he says and then he give me a big hug.
We is still both shaking, but then his hug start to feel good. And I am so glad I got an
Indian man to hold me in this cement jungle.

"They took your money," I say.

"Yeah," he says and shrug his shoulders.

"Come on," I say. "I'm gonna buy you a drink or two. You
look like you need it after what you just been through. Now don't expect me to drink with
you. I'll just sit next to you and read my AA book.

He look at me and smile and says, "Then I guess you don't got
nothing against us Cheyenne?"

"Why should I?" I say. "You Sihiyelas were with
us at Little Big Horn weren't you? You held our horses didn't you?"

"Billings ain't the Little Big Horn," he say and laugh. Then
he tells me I am a nice woman and my face blush a little. I tell him come on, I ain't got
all night to sit with him. I gotta be back at the bus station before midnight.

"That's what I thought," I say. Even if he is a wino, he
smell clean and soapy like he just took a bath. We is walking back up to the Indian bar
and I look at him good when we come under a lamp. He is like me. When he was young, I bet
he was one good-looking war whoop. And I feel young, younger than I felt in years. And
more than that, I'm am starting to get that old, real warm feeling, if you know what I
mean.

At War with
the Snake People

GUS WINTER RAISED
HIS ARMS ABOVE HIS HEAD AND GAVE THE SKY both
middle fingers. He was alone and he felt damn good. The pinto he was astride dropped
several turds onto the ground and snorted. The spring morning was chilly and Gus was
nearly finished riding the pasture, checking for newly-dropped calves when he heard an
odd, whirring sound. He felt the mare tense up beneath him.

"What the hell's that noise, girl?" he said and patted the
horse on the shoulder. Gus craned his neck and tried to scope out where the strange sound
was coming from. He couldn't see anything but he thought the noise might be originating
from the other side of a tall bluff covered with cheat grass and wild cherry bushes.

He led his mare up the small hillside and looked over the rise. Down in
a small, washed-out gully, he spotted a jackrabbit. The rabbit was backed against a bank
of clay by six rattlesnakes, heads raised in an attack position. Gus was dumbfounded. He
had never seen such a peculiar thing except one time he had smoked some crack cocaine, but
this was real. It looked like the snakes had cornered the rabbit on purpose and were
closing in for the kill.

Gus took a deep breath and scratched his head. Snakes weren't group
hunters. Snakes didn't roam in packs although his grandfather had told him a story about
snakes that he'd never forgotten. In the late 60's, his grandfather had come upon a ball
of snakes tangled together. He had been working on the new highway west of Martin and he
told Gus that a D-9 cat had unearthed a snake nest in mid-winter. They were rattlers and
were all rolled together into a large ball about three feet tall.

Gus never knew whether his grandfather was pulling his leg or not
because he ended the story by saying they'd poured gas over the snakes, cooked them up
good, and ate them. In fact, when he thought about it, he could never recall seeing any
snakes except one at a time. Now these snakes were in attack formation, acting weird, like
something out of a science fiction movie. He didn't like the way it made him feel.

Things hadn't been going that well for Gus. Only the week before he'd
gotten laid by a wino woman he'd hired to help his friend Teddy Two Bears lose his
virginity. He'd gotten a little rough with the woman and popped her once in the left eye,
blackening it. In and of itself, that little "love pat" was no big deal.

What was a big deal was that the woman, Mariana Two Knives, had been
found dead the next day with a broken neck. Gus knew that neither he nor his buddies had
killed her, but he still felt a deep sense of guilt and worry. He had talked it over with
his friends who had been there that night and they'd agreed not to say a word to anyone.
They had made a solemn vow of silence.

And after they'd pulled a train on her later that night, she'd gotten
pissed and started throwing things. She'd smashed one of his parents' lamps. Luckily his
parents and his sister had gone to Rapid City to stay overnight, but the next day his dad
raised holy hell with him for partying at the house. His dad was hanging over and had been
so mad that he backhanded Gus and knocked him down onto the living room carpet.

He was afraid of his father and for good reason. His father had often
beat the hell out of him. Once, when Gus had been drunk too, he had stood up to his
father. His whiskey courage got him a visit to the

PHS emergency
room. He learned his lesson.

Sitting on his horse, Gus rubbed his lip which was still a little
tender and looked down at the incredible scene before him. He took a deep breath and
untied his Remington bolt action .22 rifle from behind the saddle. He felt a sense of pity
for the rabbit. The rabbit was bug-eyed and screaming a high-pitched squeal. Gus had never
heard a rabbit scream before and it unnerved him. It sounded faintly human.

"Leave that friggin' rabbit alone, you knob gobblers," he
yelled and released the safety on his rifle. "You don't wanna play fair, then okay we
won't play fair."

He took aim at the largest of the snakes and fired. Blam! The
hollow point .22 long rifle slug zapped the snake's head clean from its shoulders. Gus
jacked another round into the chamber and fired again. Another snake fell over dead. A
slow and delicious sense of exhilaration rose from his groin to his heart.

"Eat lead, you slimy bastards," Gus yelled. Deep down he
envied the fact that his friend Teddy had seen combat in Desert Storm, even if he had lost
his foot and had to wear weird shoes.

He aimed again and when he did, he saw that two snakes had turned to
face him. They seemed to focus their cold, evil eyes directly upon his own. Gus flinched
and fired. He missed and gasped when he saw that those two snakes had broken off from
their attack formation and were slithering rapidly toward him and his horse.

"Son of a bitch, what's going on?" he muttered.

The rabbit gave one more scream and fell over dead. It had tiny spots
of blood all over its fur from the piercing snake fangs. Gus swore and fired twice more
and killed two more snakes, but he had lost sight of the two that had taken off toward
him. He wasn't about to wait for them to reach him. He grabbed the reins and wheeled his
mare about. He kicked her in the flanks with both boots and galloped like a bat out of
hell towards his house more than two miles away.

He put the horse in a corral near the house and took the reins, saddle,
and saddle blanket to a small tack shed between the house and corral. He kept his .22 at
his side. He broke off six inches of an alfalfa bale and tossed it to the horse and then
walked towards the house. He took the rifle with him and scouted the ground thoroughly as
he made his way to the front door.

His parents' car was gone and he assumed they were at the Longbranch
Bar in Heinzville, Nebraska. It was Friday and usually on Fridays he and his sister
Theresa had the house to themselves. He went to the refrigerator and took one of his
father's beers. He drained it in less than a minute and let out a righteous burp.

"Quit being a pig," his sister yelled from the living room.

"Here's another kiss for you," he said and let out another
earth-shattering beer burp.

"You're gross," she said.

"Gone partying, Mom and Dad?" he said to Theresa who was
sprawled out on the couch watching MTV.

"Now what do you think, Mr. Edison-Einstein?" she said,
unimpressed with Gus and his attempt at coherent conversation. She was three years younger
than Gus, a junior at the Catholic high school, and she had plans to go to college.
Theresa was a cheerleader, a straight A student, good-looking, and had a lot of friends.
Her lot in life had been to become almost the exact opposite of Gus. He resented her
success, but he secretly envied her. Why had she gotten all the luck?

"Whatcha watching?" Gus asked and squeezed onto the end of
the couch near her bare feet. Theresa didn't answer him. He looked at her feet and then
her long legs. She was wearing shorts and the angle of her legs allowed him a clear view
of her white panties. A tiny tuft of black pubic hair crawled out from beneath them. He
took a deep breath and pretended to watch the program, but every so often his eyes roamed
and he glanced at his sister's private parts. Once, he thought she had caught him in his
act of secret peeking, but she said nothing.

Gus had never even fooled around at all with his sister, but
occasionally he did have perverse thoughts about her. And once this past winter he had
walked into her bedroom to find her naked atop her bed, fluffing her pubic hairs with a
hairbrush. She had yelled at him and tossed the brush which had narrowly missed his head.

He thought about that a lot and had even made that scenario an integral
part of several masturbation fantasies. But, right at the last moment, just when the jizz
geyser squirted, he would switch his thoughts, his vision to another woman, any woman.
That way, he figured, he hadn't even committed incest in his heart and God wouldn't punish
him.

He sat blissfully, head moving from television to sister like he was at
a tennis match. His sister was watching "Beavis and Butthead." Gus didn't really
understand them, but he watched anyway and pretended interest. He tried to make small talk
with his sister, but she didn't want to be bothered.

"I never heard of no cartoon that sweared like them," he said
and waited for Theresa's reply which was slow in coming.

"The world's changing fast," she said, dismissing him.

"It is?" he asked.

"Not that you would notice," she giggled.

"Not that you would notice," he mimicked her, hurt by the
fact that she was always putting him down.

Sometimes he resented her know-it-all attitude. He sure as hell knew
things she didn't. He thought about the gang-bang and Mariana Two Knives and then
evaporated the thought when he remembered that she was now dead. For an instant he debated
whether or not to tell Theresa about the weird snakes he had seen earlier.

No, he decided, that was too much like science fiction. His sister
would giggle at him, or worse, think he had made the story up because he had nothing
better to do. He simply shut his mouth and watched her and the television.

At eleven that night their parents called from Heinzville. Theresa took
the call and a few minutes later told her brother the gist of the message. Their mom and
dad were too far gone to make the drive back to the Rez through the pine-filled hills and
were taking a motel room for the night if they could find one.

"Well, at least they called," Theresa said.

"Well, at least they called," he repeated, though this time
he had made no conscious effort to mimic his sister.

"Give them credit for that," Theresa said.

"I do. I do. Most drunk parents on the Rez don't even do
that," he agreed. He felt a slight twinge of guilt because he knew he was developing
a drinking problem himself. He envied Teddy Two Bears because Teddy could take or leave
booze. It never really mattered to his friend. In fact, nothing much seemed to bother
Teddy although in recent days he had been acting very depressed and would not tell Gus
what was bothering him.

"Yeah, I wouldn't talk too much about drinking if I were
you," Theresa said interrupting his thoughts. It was almost like she had read his
mind. He blinked at her and she got up and went towards the kitchen. "You'll probably
end up just another drunken reservation Indian," she said as she sauntered out of the
living room. She could be cold.

"We are Indians," Gus said, noting the strange sound
of his words. Of course they were Indians...

Although they were iyeska, halfbreeds, Gus was always puzzled by
the sometimes anti-Indian streak that colored much of Theresa's thinking. He looked at her
as she stood in the kitchen making herself a fried egg sandwich. She was light-skinned
like him, but she really could pass for a white woman. Maybe when she grew up, she would
leave the Rez and become white. A lot of Indians did that. Fullbloods too. It didn't
matter how dark your skin was. You could leave the Rez and become wasicu.

"Theresa, make me a sandwich too," he said.

"Dream on," she said and walked back to the living room where
she switched channels and began to watch "60 Minutes."

"I woulda made you one," he said.

"That was the last egg," she answered.

Gus shook his head and went to the kitchen. He made himself two peanut
butter and mayonnaise sandwiches and took them to his bedroom. He took off all his clothes
and stretched out on his bed, read a hot rod magazine and ate the sandwiches. In twenty
minutes, he was snoring out loud when a tremendous ear-shattering scream levitated him off
the mattress. Then a second blaring screech. It was Theresa screaming bloody murder.

"Aiiiiiiiieeeeeekkkkk! Help!"

He jumped off the bed and ran out of his room. She shrieked again. She
was in the living room standing atop the couch in front of the television.

"Theresa. What the hell's wrong," Gus shouted at her.

"Snake, snake in here," she squealed.

"Where, where is it?" he demanded harshly.

"Over there," she said pointing to a small bookcase. "It
crawled underneath those shelves."

Gus ran to the corner of the room and grabbed his father's 12 gauge off
the gun rack made of deer antlers. He jacked a shell into the chamber and gingerly crept
toward the bookcase. He was shaking and too nervous to be bothered by his nakedness.

"There it is," she yelled and Gus fired at blur of motion on
the floor.

"Got it," he said and let out a high-pitched giggle.
"It's a damn garter snake. Hahhhh. Ain't even poisonous." He picked up the
shredded serpent by its tail, waved it briefly at his sister, and then opened the front
door and tossed it out into the night.

"Well, how should I know? I'm not a snake expert," she said.

"Damn, Theresa. It was just a garter snake. You didn't have to
scream like that and scare the hell out of me. Sounded like someone was murdering
you."

"Well, it scared the damn hell out of me," she said, still
shaking though her eyes were now focused upon a snake of a different nature. Gus had never
heard her swear before.

"You're naked," she said.

"Well, you seen one, you seen 'em all," he said making light
of the fact that he was getting aroused.

"I've never seen one," Theresa said and nodded at his
hardening penis with her chin. "Can I touch it? Please?"

"Jesus, Theresa."

"Please."

"I guess," he said, "if I can touch yours."

"Okay," she said. "But you gotta promise to never tell
anybody. We shouldn't be doing this."

"I promise," he said and held his breath. His sister stood up
and slowly removed her shorts and her panties. Gus stared hard for a moment and then
reached to touch her. Her hand firmly grasped his penis as he gently stroked her and in
that breathless instant the front door burst open and their parents stood before them.

Gus spun around and faced his parents with a full erection. "He
made me," Theresa shouted. "I didn't want to. He made me do it."

Theresa's brother's face turned crimson and he wished he were dead. And
there was a damn good chance his father might just grant his wish. A damn good chance. His
father's eyes were red, cold, and glassy like those of a deadly snake ready to strike.